Fort Whipple: Prescott's frontier past

Visitors walk along the Sharlot Hall Museum campus on Thursday, May 8, 2014, in Prescott. The Governor's Mansion is preserved at the museum and pictured on the right. (Photo: Stacie Scott/The Republic)

The exterior of Fort Misery, the place where the town people met and decided to become a town and to call it Prescott, is pictured at the Sharlot Hall Museum on Thursday, May 8, 2014. (Photo: Stacie Scott/The Republic)

The old brick courthouse erected in the late-1880s was a stunning sight in the pioneer town of Prescott, but did not survive the ravages of time. It was replaced with the current structure in the early 1900s, as shown in this 1930s photo. (Photo: Provided by Sharlot Hall Museum)

The old brick courthouse erected in the late-1880s was a stunning sight in the pioneer town of Prescott, but did not survive the ravages of time. It was replaced with the current structure in the early 1900s, as shown in this 1930s photo. (Photo: Provided by Sharlot Hall Museum)

The Governor's Mansion (circa 1895) still sits on this site, a short walk from Granite Creek in Prescott, the first territorial capital of Arizona. The log cabin built in 1864 was the Territorial "home" for Governor Goodwin, and the building remains the focal point of Sharlot Hall Museum. (Photo: Provided by Sharlot Hall Museum)

An 1880s image of the Fort Whipple site looking north along Granite Creek, and showing the parade grounds and administration building, plus several barracks buildings and officer's quarters. This site is currently home to the Northern Arizona Veteran's Affairs Hospital, and the Fort Whipple Museum is housed in one of the former officer buildings. (Photo: Provided by Sharlot Hall Museum)

Fiorello LaGuardia (left), mayor of New York City, and friends visit with Sharlot Hall (center) at the Governor's Mansion and Museum during the 1930s. As a boy, LaGuardia had lived in Prescott at Fort Whipple, where his father had been bandmaster. (Photo: Provided by Sharlot Hall Museum)

Sharlot Hall preserved and restored the first Territorial Governor's Mansion and stocked it with her extensive collection of artifacts. It opened as a museum in 1928. (Photo: Roger Naylor/Special for The Arizona Republic)

The bronze sculpture of a dashing rider by Solon Borglum on Courthouse Plaza honors the Rough Riders who fought in the Spanish-American War. Locally, it is known simply as the statue of Buckey O'Neill, a Prescott journalist and mayor who died in battle in 1898. (Photo: Prescott Tourism)

Territorial Arizona towns rarely arose according to a plan. Most began as mining camps, where men drank and slept in a scattershot collection of canvas tents, where shacks eventually replaced the tents and streets meandered up hillsides. Not Prescott.

From the beginning, Prescott had a sense of purpose.

"Unlike most American frontier towns of the 19th century that sprang to life and grew haphazardly at a crossroads or along a river or mineral strike, Prescott's location and development were prudently planned," Jack August wrote in "We Call it 'Preskit.' "

Prescott was the Arizona Territory's capital, with a military post named Fort Whipple nearby to keep order.

But keeping order was never easy in the territorial West. Apache raids were frequent, and supplies were hard to come by. Prescott wasn't built atop a mine shaft, but its early fortunes were connected to a mining camp near the headwaters of the Hassayampa River, 7 miles away. So Prescott, for all its official blessings, had humble beginnings and a ragged edge.

"It was a frontier town, and it had all the characteristics of a frontier town," said Al Bates, a Prescott historian.

Arizona was not even a territory when the Civil War broke out in 1861. The region's status was a source of controversy in Washington, D.C., perhaps because many Arizonans were Confederate sympathizers.

But the region quickly started to gain standing once the war began.

When Col. James Carleton led 2,500 Unionist California volunteers to Fort Yuma in early 1862, "the days of Confederate Arizona were numbered," August wrote. By June, Carleton had become a brigadier general. He proclaimed Arizona a federal territory, "named himself military governor, declared martial law, arrested political opponents and required all remaining citizens to take an oath of allegiance."

But Carleton's actions had no legal standing. That came in February 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln, "with support of Republican Congressman John A. Gurley of Ohio and John Goodwin of Maine, among others," created the Arizona Territory from the western half of New Mexico. Gurley was supposed to be the first governor, but he died, so Goodwin was appointed to take his place. He set out for Arizona, making much of the journey by wagon train. It took months.

About this time, word had begun to spread about promising gold fields in central Arizona. Carleton sent Maj. Edward B. Willis and a group of volunteers to establish a camp near the mines. Carleton met Goodwin's entourage in New Mexico and persuaded them to locate the territorial capital near the gold fields. The California gold rush was still fresh in memory, August wrote, and "nearly everyone in the party was 'goldstruck.' "

Willis grew impatient waiting for Goodwin to arrive, so he established a post near Del Rio Springs in Chino Valley, about 20 miles from modern-day Prescott. It was named Fort Whipple, after Amiel Weeks Whipple, an officer who explored northern Arizona in 1853-54. Whipple was killed in Virginia at the Battle of Chancellorsville, the last major conflict of the Civil War, in 1862.

As Willis tried to bring in supplies, Indian raiders stole all but one of his mules. The problem of stolen livestock would persist for some time.

When Goodwin finally arrived in January 1864, he started looking for a suitable site for a capitol. The shortcomings of Fort Whipple's location were becoming apparent.

"Initially, they set up at a spot that seemed ideal. There was water and grass for their animals. However, it lacked wood for building and for fires. And it was too far away from where the miners were set up," Bates said.

The Apache raids never seemed to stop, but lack of supplies was a bigger problem. Records on file at Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott show that Willis, and the miners his troops were supposed to protect, were short on food and other necessities. When the troops received a shipment of ammunition, for example, it was of poor quality and not the proper caliber.

In March 1864, when Apaches raided a local ranch, "we were not in a condition to afford any assistance," Willis wrote to his superiors. "The men with me were barefooted, and had consumed their last rations that morning."

Willis also had few troops at his disposal.

"You had one cavalry group and you had one infantry group and they were ineffectual because they were inexperienced," Bates said. Local militias set out to look for Apaches, but they also had supply problems.

By spring 1864, Goodwin had found a location for a capital city. It had water and timber and just enough feed for horses. It was about 20 miles from Fort Whipple and about 7 miles from the goldfields.

"He determined that the place to establish the territorial government ... was this place in the wilderness on Granite Creek," said Fred Veil, acting director of Sharlot Hall Museum.

Fort Whipple was moved about 2 miles away from Goodwin's townsite.

Naming Prescott the capital put the territorial government in an awkward position.

"How could there be a capitol where there wasn't a town?" Bates said.

Prescott was built "with remarkable speed," August wrote. Within months, a governor's mansion was built, lots were sold, and a newspaper, the Arizona Miner, began to publish. On July 4, 1864, the town had a "rousing Independence Day celebration," the paper reported. The Fort Whipple band played and there was "ample food and drink."

Goodwin appointed Robert Groom to survey and map the town. Groom laid out the townsite in a grid, setting aside an entire block for a plaza that to this day is a popular gathering place. The founders named streets after Gurley, Goodwin, Carleton and Willis.

The tents that merchants had erected were quickly replaced with buildings and "commercial activity centered on the plaza, which had been set aside to accommodate a courthouse befitting the Yavapai County seat," August wrote. The courthouse was built in 1878 and rebuilt in 1916. Trees also were part of the carefully laid plans. Although some trees were cut down for lumber, August wrote that the town commissioners, and an editorial in the Miner, urged the town's citizens to spare most of them, "unless actually in the way of a building. They yield a pleasant shade, and add greatly to the beauty of the locality, as all must allow."

When the Civil War ended, the nation turned its attention to Indian conquests, and in 1871 the Army named Gen. George Crook to lead the Apache campaign in Arizona. His aide, John Bourke, called Prescott a town "in the bosom of the pine forests, amid the granite crags of the foot-hills of the Mogollon."

As for the fort, he thought it "a ramshackle, tumble-down palisade of unbarked pine logs hewn from the adjacent slopes; it was supposed to 'command' something, exactly what, I do not remember, as it was so dilapidated that every time the wind rose we were afraid that the palisade was doomed."

Crook did not spend a great deal of time there. He was in the field often, moving from post to post, hunting, scouting. Using Apache scouts and troops supplied with mule trains, Crook began to break down Apache resistance. It would be nearly a decade before the Apache wars ended, but Crook is credited with turning the tide.

By the time he left Arizona in 1875, most of the post had been rebuilt. The new Fort Whipple became a focal point for Prescott socialites, who attended weekly dances there.

By the late 1870s, Prescott was becoming an iconic Western town. Virgil Earp owned a sawmill, and his brothers Wyatt and Morgan came to join him. Doc Holliday came as well, and they gambled in Whiskey Row's saloons before moving on to Tombstone and taking their place in history.

The town's economy suffered from time to time as markets for ore rose and fell, but by this time, Prescott was not dependent solely on mining fortunes. Ranching had begun to take hold, and the Fort Whipple soldiers provided a market for merchants and saloon owners.

"There were tensions at times," Bates said. "When the soldiers got passes, they went into town, where there was booze. And you mix young men and booze, and you have conflict."

When the Apache wars ended in 1886, Arizona's military posts were gradually phased out. Fort Whipple stayed active until 1897, when Congress deactivated it. According to an article in the Smoke Signal, a journal published by the Tucson Corral of the Westerners, the officer who locked the gate when the troops departed was still there four days later when Congress declared war on Spain.

Volunteers gathered at the fort to train for war and eventually became part of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

Whipple's days as a military post were numbered, and it later became a military hospital. After World War I, it specialized in treating patients with lung problems ranging from chemical-weapons injuries to tuberculosis, Bates said. Today, it is a veterans hospital.

As Arizona's population grew, people were attracted to Prescott's temperate climate, its granite dells, its Western character and its trees. A century and a half later, Prescott is still known for the trees that shade Courthouse Square.

"It's a gorgeous little town," Bates said.

Prescott's Sesquicentennial

The city will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding with activities Friday-Sunday, May 30-June 1.

The celebration begins with a ceremony at 5 p.m. May 30 at Courthouse Square. There will be historical presentations, a Western village, music, food booths, games for children, re-enactments, a climbing wall, and beer and wine gardens. See the complete list of activities and locations online.

Details: cityofprescott.net. Click on May 30 on the calendar and then click "Prescott's 150th Birthday Celebration."

More history

Sharlot Hall Museum

Sharlot Hall was a frontier poet who was appointed territorial historian in 1909, making her the first female public official in the Arizona Territory. She founded the museum in 1928.

The centerpiece is the original Governor's Mansion, built in 1864. Other buildings open to visitors include the Fremont House, which was the home of the fifth territorial governor, John Charles Fremont; and the Ranch House and School House, replicas that give tourists a feel for the tight quarters shared by pioneers.

The modern Sharlot Hall Building houses exhibits on mining and ranching during territorial days, as well as a cultural history of the Yavapai Prescott Indian Tribe.

Sharlot Hall also operates the Fort Whipple Museum at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus, 500 N. State Route 89. It is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Tours are available for groups of 10 or more by appointment.

Details: 415 W. Gurley St. 928-445-3122, www.sharlot.org.

Phippen Museum

This small museum showcases the work of George Phippen and other prominent Western artists. The museum's 40th annual Western Art Show and Sale is Saturday and Sunday, May 24-26. More than 100 artists will show and sell art on Courthouse Square those days. Special events include a quick-draw competition, live auction and awards ceremony.

Details: 4701 State Route 89. 928-778-1385, www.phippenartmuseum.org.

Smoki Museum

The museum was designed to resemble a pueblo. It was built in 1935 by the Smoki People, a fraternal organization of Prescott businessmen who imitated Indian dances and ceremonies to raise funds for the Frontier Days rodeo. The group disbanded in the 1990s after protests by the Hopi Tribe that the dances were offensive.

Today, the museum displays artifacts and promotes Indian art and culture. It holds art and archaeological objects from people as far back as the Anasazi. Exhibits feature painted pottery, intricately woven baskets, kachinas, jewelry made from stone and bone, ancient arrowheads and petroglyphs.